The Kitchen God's Wife
by Amy Tan
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Book Summary Information
Author: Amy TanEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2006-09-21
ISBN: 0143038109
Number of pages: 416
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Book Reviews of The Kitchen God's Wife
Book Review: Tan - betrayed by her own shallow roots
Summary: 2 Stars
I loved "The Joy Luck Club" the movie but never read the book by the famous Amy Tan. So I thought, why not check her out, starting with her sophmore effort, "The Kitchen God's Wife" ? After all, she's sold tons of books and is immensely popular with the reading public. Her books have even made it to reading lists for literature in American colleges.
Sadly, I was disappointed, for a number of reasons. To begin with, the storyline is rather dull - though it picks up towards the end, the lengthy middle portion about the war years in Chongqing and Kunming goes absolutely nowhere. It is also predictably familiar - a repeat of the same old "I Will Survive" mantra by the victimized Chinese sisterhood - her stereotyping of Chinese males as weak minded, pathetic brutes who mistreat their women only because they can, is both tiresome and culturally offensive. Not to mention that the white Christian man is invariably the knight in shining armor, who comes to rescue the brave tormented woman from her fate and ride with her into the sunset.
Worse, Tan betrays her own shallow roots and shockingly limited knowledge of her ancestral culture in the mistakes she makes in little details that may escape the eye of Western readers but not that of their Asian counterparts. For instance, she doesn't seem to tell the difference between Taoism and Buddhism - often she says the latter when clearly she means the former. There's worse to come - the term of endearment ("tang jie") Winnie uses for her cousin Peanut she translates into English as "sugar sister" when the term in fact means "first cousin - specifically, one's father's brother's daughter". Yes, unlike the Western "one size fits all" term of uncle and aunt for one's parents' siblings and their spouses, the Chinese have specific forms of address for each type of uncle/aunt relationship, depending on how one is related. Confusing, yes, but Chinese all the same and I very much suspect that Tan can't distinguish between them or tell one from the other.
She also makes the big mistake of dismissing Confucianism in one broad sweep and attributing the ills of Chinese feudal society to this ancient philosopher. If it's the backward and evil creed she says it is, why are there so many so named Confucius Institutes sprouting out from all corners of the world today catering to the language and cultural needs of foreign students ?
Amy Tan may have made her mark as a fiction writer in the late 80s/early 90s writing about the sorrows of Chinese women in feudal times for Western readers, who understandably lapped it all for it conformed with their own vague notions and prejudices about Chinese culture. Today, in the context of China regaining her place on the world stage and the revival of interest in this ancient civilization, Tan's novels (like this one) should be read (if at all) with a wry sense of irony. An ambassador for her own motherland she is not.
Summary of The Kitchen God's Wife
Winnie and Helen have kept each other's worst secrets for more than fifty years. Now, because she believes she is dying, Helen wants to expose everything. And Winnie angrily determines that she must be the one to tell her daughter, Pearl, about the past?including the terible truth even Helen does not know. And so begins Winnie's story of her life on a small island outside Shanghai in the 1920s, and other places in China during World War II, and traces the happy and desperate events tha led to Winnie's coming to America in 1949.
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